Sunday, February 21, 2016

Evelyn Waugh, Helena

Once, very long ago, before ever the flowers were named which struggled and fluttered below the rain-swept walls, there sat at an upper window a princess and a slave reading a story which even then was old: or rather, to be entirely prosaic, on the wet afternoon of the Nones of May in the year (as it was computed later) of Our Lord 273, in the City of Colchester, Helena, red-haired, youngest daughter of Coel, Paramount Chief of the Trinovantes, gazed into the rain while her tutor read the Iliad of Homer in a Latin paraphrase. (p. 3)

Summary: Helena, daughter of old king Coel, that merry old soul, is as practical and prosaic and down-to-earth as one can imagine; her response to the Iliad is that she would like to find the actual ruins of Troy someday. The only thing that usually gets her spirit soaring is horses; although, lately, she has been taking peeks at a Roman soldier, Constantius who is hanging around on some mysterious mission. Marrying Constantius will take her well into the Roman Empire, the decaying, decadent, strife-ridden core of the world, in which the people are slowly drowsing themselves away on the drug-like effects of vague dreams and ungrounded abstractions.

It is an age in which all religion tends Gnostic. But there is one religious group that has not wholly succombed. It's not that they have escaped infection -- they too are whisked away by pseudo-profundities and irresponsible abstractions, both because of the sentiments they generate and because dabbling in these things is the way to be 'educated' and 'intellectual' and 'pious' -- but this religious group has a different answer to the question: When and where did all this religious stuff you keep talking about actually happen? She is quite surprised when they tell her, without hesitation, that it happened in Palestine, under Pontius Pilate. It is enough to catch her interest, and she will eventually, of course, become Christian and set out to find the actual Cross of Christ.

In one sense this is a historical novel and in another sense not. Except for a few scattered licenses, Waugh is careful to fit the main events of his story to the history and, where history is unclear, not to stray too far from the rumors and legends that have come down to us. But the characters are recognizably, and deliberately, modern. Marcias chatters Gnostic emanations, but he does so in a way that shows him to be very much like the modern religious con man; Eusebius of Nicomedia may talk Christian theology but he would make a very good worldly Anglican prelate, capable of entering all the right social circles because he is able to play on the religious tastes of his audience. The Emperor Constantine talks like an upper-class British prig. In a very masterly way, Waugh tells an apparently pious story that is at the same time an almost wickedly gleeful skewering of the modern age, which likes its religion spiritualized into purely symbolic realms and its politics full of cunning schemes for a purely imaginary future, which loves people as long as it can consider them as vague generalities to serve as convenient excuses for its own preferences, which does great evils for airy abstractions and fails to recognize that goodness is the most pragmatic thing in the world.

And against it all is the bulwark of Helena, and a religion that has no point at all unless there was a real death on a real Cross for real forgiveness of real sins of real people.

Favorite Passage:

There was a further pause; then in clear, schoolroom tone, Helena said: "What I should like to know is: when and where did all this happen? And how do you know?"

Minervina frowned. Marcias replied: "These things are beyond time and space. Their truth is integral to their proposition and by nature transcends material proof."

"Then, please, how do you know?"

"By a lifetime of patient and humble study, your Majesty."

"But study of what?"

"That, I fear, would take a lifetime to particularize."

A little murmur of admiration greeted this neat reply and on the crest of it the hostess rose to dismiss the meeting. (pp. 108-109)

Recommendation: There are one or two odd artistic choices, but in a number of ways this is Waugh at his best. Highly Recommended.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please understand that this weblog runs on a third-party comment system, not on Blogger's comment system. If you have come by way of a mobile device and can see this message, you may have landed on the Blogger comment page, or the third party commenting system has not yet completely loaded; your comments will only be shown on this page and not on the page most people will see, and it is much more likely that your comment will be missed.

Caveats

For a rough introduction to my philosophy of blogging, including the Code of Amiability I try to follow on this weblog, please read my fifth anniversary post. I consider blogging to be a very informal type of publishing - like putting up thoughts on your door with a note asking for comments. Nothing in this weblog is done rigorously: it's a forum to let my mind be unruly, a place for jottings and first impressions. Because I consider posts here to be 'literary seedings' rather than finished products, nothing here should be taken as if it were anything more than an attempt to rough out some basic thoughts on various issues. Learning to look at any topic philosophically requires, I think, jumping right in, even knowing that you might be making a fool of yourelf; so that's what I do. My primary interest in most topics is the flow and structure of reasoning they involve rather than their actual conclusions, so most of my posts are about that. If, however, you find me making a clear factual error, let me know; blogging is a great way to get rid of misconceptions.